The Nonsensical Ramblings of a Would-Be Genre Filmmaker

After Action Report: Blood Bath 2 Film Festival

For any local horror fans who missed out on this – quite simply – you missed a lot. Blood Bath 2 featured roughly 16 hours of horror goodness. Opening the program was a set of shorts from the Splatterfest Film festival. For those of you not in the know – as I was – Houston’s Splatterfest Film Festival features shorts from teams of filmmakers who have two days to write, shoot and edit their film. To add an element of “horror improv” to it, the teams are assigned a murder weapon, a character to include and a line of dialogue that each short must have. It made for some very interesting and creative films. Of that first set, “Award-Winning Masterpiece” was particularly memorable as perhaps the funniest and most twisted take on exorcisms that I have ever seen.

The second block featured three finalists from the DVXFest Monsterfest: visually interesting “Dispatch”, the fearless and brutal, “Bits & Pieces” and the cleverly told “Red and the Wolf”. Now before the festival, I considered the shorts a bit dismissively, but after this weekend – especially in the case of the Splatterfest films – I will equally look as forward to these as I do the features. I could probably spend the entire article discussing the shorts, but I will move onto the features. Six features were presented and, unfortunately do to certain time constraints (mostly involving parking meters), I was able to make it to one and three-quarters of them. However, reviews of these movies will be coming later and, thanks to the awesome Gore Whore at Twisted Central, we’ll have a review of “Kodie” up later today. A review of “The Super”, the winner of the Best Feature award, will be coming later this week.

All is all, it was a great time held in a great Indie film-friendly environment. If you missed this, don’t worry though – three horror festivals are planned for 2011 and all of them (as of this writing) will be held at the Texas Theater. February will bring us the Pretty Scary festival (showcasing horror films by women), June brings us the Fears For Queers festival (GLBT produced/themed horror) and then next November brings us another Blood Bath film festival.

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Programming aside, the festival just had a great vibe to it. I think it was said best to me by one of the guests on hand. She said – and I will paraphrase here – that the film industry is like a family; the horror industry, an even smaller and closer family. Quite honestly, that’s what it felt like: one great big family gathering.

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Dubbed, "TerrorScribe" by a former editor, Joe made the conversion to horror sometime in the mid-2000s. Little did he know he'd favored the genre all of his life. When not struggling with short stories, he provided genre film reviews for local entertainment sites and later genre sites who could suffer his cynical views.

It was that same cynicism - and some might say hubris - that lead him to have a brief flirtation with filmmaking. His first two efforts, "Annotated" and "Antes Que Seja Tarde (Before It's Too Late)" both premiered at a local H.P. Lovecraft film festival. A third short, "Survivor Girl" proved to be his undoing though plans are in the works to revived the cursed project.

Born and raised in Dallas, TX., Joe now resides in a small Texas town. Statistics say more dead bodies turn up in small towns that big cities... though he claims to have NOTHING to do with that.

3 thoughts on “After Action Report: Blood Bath 2 Film Festival”

Thanks for the praise. We had a blast making “Award-Winning Masterpiece: The Movie” (although we’re kinda bummed that the joke is ruined, since it actually has won awards now). Watch the movie again and see more ridiculous sh*t on The Deadbeat Club’s website (that’d be us). Toodles!

Nice write-up, Joe! As a first-time judge on the Blood Bath panel, I have to say that the quality of the majority of stuff on the schedule did NOT make judging an easy task, but I would do it again in a fading heartbeat! The only thing that raises the stakes on the Blood Bath festival is Texas Frightmare Weekend in April/May. But rather than just choosing one, I go both ways! (Did that come out right? LOL). Plus, you’re right – BB has a closer knit “horror family” vibe that I really enjoy. Although without TFW, I wouldn’t have met many of the friends I have now in the first place! Can’t wait for next year’s fest…and hope to see you there, too!